THERE is nothing like enjoying nature from the mobile hide better known as a boat.

I paid one of my usual visits to Hollingworth Lake between Littleborough and Rochdale. This is now of 120 acre (48 hectares) Country Park.

It was built in 1805 to provide water for the locks feeding the Rochdale Canal.

At its deepest point the lake — or should it be reservoir — is eighty feet and in the summer a pleasure boat takes trippers around the lake.

In Victorian times the first man to swim the English Channel trained at Hollingworth. Almost from the day it opened Hollingworth became a popular place to visit and it bacame known as the Weavers Seaport. I did three tours during the day and my bird list included cormorant heron, swallows, swift, and a very bedraggled looking goosander. The male bird was in moult and fast losing his feathers. On the bank there were lots of mallards which were also in full moult.